Life Hacks From the Road: The Fine Print, Literally

Blurry product label.

When shopping, there are times, even with my reading glasses, I can´t make out the small print on a product package.

Damn it, that´s frustrating.

One day, a hack occurred to me.

I whipped out my phone, selected the camera, and used the built-in zoom.

Voila! I can read the tiny print!

I´d forgotten this hack the other day when shopping for coffee at the Walmart in Mexico City. I had to ask a passing woman if she could tell me whether the chocolate flavoring of the coffee meant there were added calories.

Clear product label.

Other life hacks from the road here.

Life Hacks From the Road: Bread Bags

Sadly dry bread. Mexico City. November 2018.

In Mexico City, I went every morning to a local bakery for my day's bread.

The bread baggers asked: Paper or plastic?

We should get paper, right? Of course. Not only for the environment but for the bread.

Well, damn.

I discovered that putting my bread in a paper bag for the day resulted in dry, crumbly bread before the day was out. Putting my bread in a plastic bag resulted in soft, chewy bread all day.

Counter-intuitive to me.

My solution: Re-use my plastic bag on my daily bread pick-ups.

It could be most of the world already knew this about bread.

Life Hacks From the Road: It's the Sunglasses

Sunglasses and sandals outside monastery in Gonder, Ethiopia. 2011.

I pouted when, on sunny days, I couldn't see what was on my new camera's LCD monitor if I turned it for a portrait view.

In the horizontal view, I could see the LCD monitor fine. 

It made no sense at all. What the hell was wrong with my camera?

I did my research.

Well, fuckity fuck.

My sunglasses.

Remove my sunglasses and voila! I can see the monitor! Put 'em back on and the monitor is dark.


Other crazy hacks from the road:

• My mouse lost consciousness. 
• I had a headache that just wouldn't go away. 

Life Hacks From the Road: Fishing and Friends

Lake Martin, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. September 2014.

By living rootless, I have the privilege of meeting people with life experiences that I might not encounter if I were rooted.

This, in turn, means I get to learn cool stuff that I might not otherwise learn.

Thus a new series: Life Hacks From the Road.

My first hack is about fishing and friends, and it comes from a fellow TLGer, Jennifer.


Jennifer and her husband, Martin, stood outside chatting with me one Sunday morning following a Catholic Mass in Tbilisi. We talked about meeting people in new places. About creating a social network from scratch.

Jennifer explained her easy-going philosophy:

I'm at a pond.
There are a lot of fish in the pond.
I throw a line out to see if a fish bites.
Sometimes a fish bites, I reel it in, and it's good.
Sometimes no fish bite, so I just throw out a line later. Or in a different spot.
Sometimes a fish bites, I reel it in, and it's not to my taste, and I release it back into the water.

Me being an introvert, analytical, sometimes-overthinker - gee - Jennifer's philosophy was so simple: Sometimes you land a fish, sometimes not, sometimes you gotta let it go, no big deal. Tomorrow's another day.

But you've got to throw out a line.

Getting Things Done

Getting things done

There's a whole industry out there focused on the art and science of GTD - getting things done, sometimes referred to as "life hacks" or more prosaically, "productivity." 

Laying street tile, Tbilisi, Georgia.

As my interregnum between teaching English in Rustavi and relocating to New Mexico begins to close, I sometimes fret about my pace at getting things done. The truth is, though, I've put one GTD step in front of the other pretty well in regard to transitioning from one rootless chapter to the next. So I'll give myself a good grade on that.

Working the farm, Holstein, Missouri

In other ways, though, I struggle with GTD. It'd be easy to point to the usual suspect, procrastination, but that's just the external behavior that arises from the true culprits:

• Fear
• Discipline
• Process design (knowing the goals, whether you've got the *right* goals, efficiency, correct priorities, capacity) 

Putting up plums, Gurjaani, Georgia

GTD porn

There's no shortage of books, websites, consultants, apps, motivational speakers, life coaches (or GMAFB, "life design" coaches) out there devoted to helping us get things done. Some of it is good and some of it is schlock.

Unfortunately, if you're like me, sometimes you can be so entranced by the life hack literature out there, it keeps you from getting things done. A good summary here:

Joining a Facebook group about creative productivity is like buying a chair about jogging. 

Merlin Mann

Carrying hay, Ethiopia

Here are some resources I like:



A worthwhile investment of two hours of your life is to watch Randy Pausch's lecture on Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, and his lecture on Time Management.  You may already be familiar with Randy Pausch. He was a professor of computer science (virtual reality and other cool stuff) at Carnegie Mellon University. He died of pancreatic cancer in 2008. If your internet connection isn't up to watching the video on Youtube, you can download a copy of the lectures here.

Making apple butter, Holstein, Missouri

Stepcase Lifehack. From the site: ... dedicated to lifehacks, which is a phrase that describes any advice, resource, tip or trick that will help you get things done more efficiently and effectively.

43 Folders, specifically: Getting Started With "Getting Things Done. I first cited 43 Folders when I talked about going paperless.

It can be a dry read and it's more than 20 years old, but: 7 Habits of Highly Successful People. The ideas in the book can be life-changing, although they're super-hard to practice.

Old Missouri State Penitentiary, Art in the Park, Jefferson City

 

So, back to me:

Even though I feel good about some of the things I'm doing to reach goals, I've got stuff out there awaiting my attention. These range from tedious maintenance tasks that mitigate system failure (the not if, but when, remember?), to a long-deferred overhaul of a website I have, and so on.

As a former colleague liked to say, I need to get crack-a-lackin'.